Tag Archives: gestural

Making sounds with gestures

It’s kind of haptic; it’s kind of gestural; and it’s all about the sound, Mogees. Here’s the video,

Mogees – Gesture recognition with contact-microphones from bruno zamborlin on Vimeo.

In case what you’ve just seen interests you, here are some more details from the Jan. 5, 2012 article by Nancy Owano for physorg.com,

 The Mogees is a project that stems from the department of computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, where researcher Bruno Zamborlin collaborates with a team at IRCAM [Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique] in Paris to experiment with new methods for “gestural interaction” in coming up with novel ways of making sounds. … The video shows the use of a contact microphone and audio processing software to construct a gesture-recognizing touch interface from assorted surfaces—a tree trunk, a balloon, a glass panel at a bus stage, and an inflated balloon. Also, different gestures control different sounds.

As to how that microphone and audio processing software work, here’s an explanation from Sebastian Anthony’s Jan. 4, 2012 article for ExtremeTech,

First of all, that little silver nugget — which seems to utilize some kind of suction cup — contains multiple microphones to create a stereo image of the sounds it hears. Second, that black cable connects to a PC of some kind; probably a laptop, considering the guy plays music on a tree and a bus shelter. On the PC, the vibrations of your fingers tapping on the surface are analyzed and converted into gestures, and then MaxMSP — a visual programming language for creating music and other multimedia experiences — turns the gestures into sounds.

You can get more information about Bruno Zamborlin at his website and you can find more about Mogees here at Goldsmith’s. I highly recommend reading the two articles mentioned.